by Nagai Kafu
Voici le soir charmant, ami du criminal
Il vient comme un complice, à pas de loup, le ciel
Se ferme lentement comme une grande alcôve,
Et l’homme impatient se change en bête fauve.
(The tender night, friend of sin, advances as
stealthily as a wolf, like an accomplice in crime.
As the sky is gradually closed like a most
spacious bedroom, the tormented man
also becomes like a foolish beast.)28
Last night, as usual, I left home as soon as lights came on in the city and, having had dinner at a place where many people congregate and the sound of music streams out, entered a certain theater. It was not in order to see a play but to become intoxicated with the light of the lamps glistening in the high, gilded, vaulted ceiling, the spacious stage, and the box seats all around, so I chose an unsophisticated musical comedy where many dancing girls performed and noisily sang popular songs.
Having spent half the evening there, I went outside with the crowd, sent off by waltz music signaling the theater’s closing, when the cold wind quickly hit my face. . . . I can never forget the charming sensation of this moment, which always happens when I leave a theater. The surrounding scenery of the city was in sharp contrast to the hustle and bustle of the early evening when I had entered the theater but was everywhere pregnant with the shadows of the deepening night; feeling as if I had come upon an unfamiliar street, I had an urge to walk aimlessly, driven by some vague sentiment of uncertainty coupled with a sense of curiosity.
Indeed, the charm of the city late at night is precisely this uncertainty, the mystery evoked by doubt and curiosity.
If someone is lingering behind a store whose lights have been turned off and doors closed, I am curious who he is and what he is doing, even if I don’t suspect that he is a thief; and if I see a uniformed, formidable-looking policeman at the corner of an alley, without particular reason I think of a crime. All men walking with their hats pulled down over their eyes and their hands in their pockets look as if they have lost money at gambling and are contemplating suicide; a carriage emerging from darkness and driving past me into another darkness makes my heart pound, and I become incessantly ruffled as I imagine an adulterous love affair, an illicit relationship, concealed inside when I see, at a far distance, the bright lights of hotels and saloons triumphantly shining upon the deepening night. It is as if they are suggesting that all the pleasures of the world reside only there. The silhouettes of men and women swarming around, going in and coming out, are like butterflies that dance playfully in the flower garden of dissipation; and aren’t their laughter and voices, which drift over from time to time, a seductive music of indescribable sweetness?
It is the moment of dreadful “destiny.” The women who suddenly appear at this moment, at this very instant, in the flickering lights of the street, swishing their skirts like winds and emitting the scent of makeup into the evening air, are the spirits of the night. They are sin and baseness incarnate. They are the angels of the evil world summoned by Mephisto to appear at the doorway of the young Marguerite. They are goddesses who can see through the destiny and every thought of every young man who wanders in the night, from his past to his future.
So when the man hears their voices calling out to him and sees them coming close, he feels as if he is witnessing his past omens right in front of him and, accepting his fate, resigns himself to holding the cold hand of ignominy.
After I left the theater, I kept on walking along Broadway in the dead of the night, passing a tall building of twenty or more floors that soars like a stone pillar at Madison Square and conjures up a castle in dreamland, and soon came upon the clump of trees at Union Square in all probability and the lights coming through them. As I came closer, I heard water dripping from a fountain behind a tree, sounding, in the quiet night, as if someone were sobbing, so I sat down on a bench beside it and gazed at the reflection of the lights moving and breaking on the surface of the water, indulging in idle thought that kept welling up within me.
I heard the footsteps of someone approaching me and some whispering in my ear, but after a while I resumed my walk . . . but how could I have been trapped? I found myself walking with one of those evil women of the night, who led me by the hand to an unfamiliar back street.
I looked around and saw tenement houses on both sides of the road, red bricks darkened with grime, doors slanted, and lightless windows; as I climbed up the low stone steps and entered the front door, darkness was lurking, and from the basement some damp air streamed out and assailed my nostrils with an offensive odor. The woman stopped suddenly, studied my appearance a while under the nearby streetlight, and then smiled, revealing white teeth between her rouged lips.
I shivered in spite of myself. And yet I didn’t have the willpower to shake off her hand and run away but rather was driven by an ardent desire to fall voluntarily into darkness.
It is strange how one develops a taste for evil. Why is it that the forbidden fruit tastes so delicious? Prohibition adds the sweetness, and transgression increases the fragrance. As the flow of a mountain stream does not become violent unless there are rocks, so too is man incapable of discovering the excitement of crime, the pleasure of evil, unless he has conscience and morality.
I let myself be led away through the dark entrance and up the dark stairway. As there was no covering on the stairs, the sound echoed throughout the deserted house like ice being crushed, and a cold dampness, gushing forth from heaven knows where, brushed against my neck like the hair of a dead person.
We mounted to the second, third, and finally what I thought was the fifth floor, where the woman opened the door, click-clacking her keys, and then pushed me inside.
Thick darkness was filling the room as well, but as the woman lit a gaslight the clouds of mystery dissipated, and all at once, like magic, a torn sofa, an old bed, a clouded mirror, a washbasin filled with water, and various other pieces of furniture scattered all over the room appeared before me. The room was apparently in the attic, and although the ceiling was low and the walls stained, it suggested a rather cozy dwelling, judging from the dirty nightdress, drawers, and old stockings strewn about here and there. However, this must be the same kind of coziness you feel when you peep into a dog’s house with unkempt straw for its bed or a bird’s nest covered with droppings.
While I was looking around, the woman took off her hat and then her dress, and, wearing only a short white chemise, she sat on a chair beside me and began smoking a cigarette.
I folded my arms firmly and gazed at her in silence, like an archaeologist looking up at the Sphinx in the Egyptian desert.
Look at her, at the way she exposes her stockinged legs even above her knees, crosses one leg over a knee, bends the upper part of her body backward, revealing her breasts from her low-cut undergarment, holds the back of her head with her raised, naked arms, and exhales smoke toward the ceiling with her face turned upward. Ah! What is this if not a cruel yet brave stone statue of defiance and ignominy that does not fear God, does not fear man, and has thoroughly cursed all worldly virtues? Does her face not betray the tragic beauty of the sun setting on a solitary castle, the face that has struggled against destructive “Time” by means of powder, rouge, hairpieces, and fake gems? The color of her eyes, which are neither asleep nor awake under their heavy lids, may be compared to the surface of a large swamp that emits poisonous chemical gas. Was Baudelaire, the father of the Decadents, not referring to the eyes of this type of woman when he wrote:
Quand vers toi mes désirs partent en
caravan, Ces yeux sont la citerne oii
boivent mes ennuis.
(When my desires like a caravan head toward you,
your eyes are the water of the cistern that soothes my
troubled soul.)29
and again:
Ces yeux, oii rien ne se révèle De
doux ni d’amer,
Sont deux bijoux froids oi
i se
mêle L’or avec le fer.
(Your eyes, revealing not even joy or sorrow, are
like cold jewels where iron and gold are
blended.)30
I can no longer be satisfied with only the loveliness of a Koharu [heroine in Chikamatsu’s Love Suicide of Amishima] or the melancholy of a Violetta or a Marguerite. They are too frail. They are flowers that have scattered under the rain called custom and morality, and they lack the unyielding spirit of noxious plants that do not wilt in the storm of punishment and discipline but stretch their vile vines toward the sky of death and destruction and spread their sinful leaves under it.
Ah, queen of evil! When I press my troubled forehead against your bosom, where your cold blood resounds like the dripping of wine onto the bottom of a dark wine cellar, I do not feel love of a lover but a sisterly intimacy, the protection of an affectionate mother.
Debauchery and death are linked together. Please laugh at my usual foolishness. I spent the entire night yesterday with this prostitute, sleeping like “a corpse lying next to a corpse.”
(April 1907)
A June Night’s Dream
The French steamer, Bretagne, has left the pier at the mouth of the Hudson River on schedule, carrying me, the wanderer, from North America to the shores of Europe.
High in the July sky, the buildings of New York soar like a strange ridge of clouds; the Brooklyn Bridge, which lies across the sky, is larger than a rainbow; and the Statue of Liberty stands erect in the middle of the water—the familiar scenery of the bay to which I have become accustomed during these years is steadily disappearing between the sky and the waves . . . and soon the ship glides along the deep green shores of Staten Island and is about to float out into the vast expanse of the Atlantic Ocean from the strait of Sandy Hook.
Ah! This moment may well mark the last time in my life that I see America’s hills and waters. Once I leave this place, when, on what occasion, will I ever have an opportunity to come again?
I leaned over the railing of the deck and desperately tried to see for one last time the unforgettable Staten Island, its woods along the shores, the roofs in its villages—ah! It was on the very shore of this island that I spent over a month while the summer was at its prime, till last night when I boarded the ship—but, how unfortunate, the scorching heat of the July morning was covering sea and sky with a lead-colored vapor, blurring not only the woods and the houses but even the prominent hills like a cluster of trailing clouds.
The sorrow of parting, regret, attachment—ah! Is there a more cruel, more unbearable suffering than this? I might go out of my mind and even jump into the water if, tonight, the moon should gently shed a sad light upon my cabin’s window . . . I am such a weakling, and besides, traveling all by myself. If I want to cry, I shall cry. When I am sad, I shall chronicle the sadness, that may be the only consolation. So, rocking along on the Atlantic Ocean, I pick up my pen. . . .
Looking back, it was four years ago that I left Japan. America has now become my second home. Among the many things I remember fondly, what is particularly hard to forget concerns, alas, the maiden from whom I parted last night, the well-being of the lovely Rosalyn.
It was early this summer, when the apple blossoms in the orchards had completely fallen. During the preceding four years, I had seen just about everything in American society that I wanted to see or examine, and so, as I had to wait perhaps till the end of the fall for travel funds for Europe to arrive from home, I moved to the shore of Staten Island, which lies at the mouth of the bay, in order to get away from New York City during the summer.
Staten Island must be known to anyone who has spent a summer in New York. It is an island dotted with show grounds, places to cool off, and swimming areas like South Beach and Midland Beach. But the place I chose for my respite was (although on the island) a remote, inconvenient, tiny village near the ocean little known except perhaps to fishing enthusiasts who come from the city on a Saturday or Sunday, if at all.
You reach the shore by crossing the waters on a large, flat, oval steamboat that looks like a yakatabune [roofed pleasure boat], and from there it is about a thirty-minute train ride. To go from New York City, where greenery is rare, to this island is to be suddenly struck by the fragrance of the air and the beauty of the fields; the sharp contrast makes one wonder if one is in a dream. As I had become completely bored by the rambling and monotonous scenery of the American countryside, which is of course continental in nature, I was particularly pleased with this island’s scenery, which was the exact opposite, smaller scaled, lovely, and full of variety. On one side of the railway tracks, there are small woods and green fields with tiny streams beyond which one sees the expanse of the calm inland sea, and on the other, hills covered with various kinds of deep green trees roll high and low, somewhat reminding one of the scenery near Zushi or Kamakura. Not only that, there are also picturesque meadows covered with countless yellow and white asters as far as the eye can see, as well as swampy places where various water plants such as reeds, cattails, and candocks grow thick, making you feel squeamish.
After I pass through four or five small wooden stations, watching such scenery without becoming bored, the train reaches the village station where I must get off. As I come down from the wooden platform, I note that on opposite sides of the street there are two bars operated by Germans and, in front of them, stage coaches that are regularly sent out from the inns along the beach. This area is rather crowded, with little shops selling daily necessities such as a hardware store, a greengrocery, a butcher, and a shoe store, where the screaming of babies and children or the loud chattering of housewives can be heard; but once you leave this place and follow a road, either to your right or to your left, and go for two or three chô [200 to 300 yards] under a row of leafy maple trees, all you see are copses on both sides that look as if they have never been touched by a hatchet, as well as dirty roofs here and there in the shadow of hills where beautiful wildflowers and green grass grow luxuriantly. All through the area, small birds keep chirping, and from time to time the barking of dogs and clucking of hens echo farther and farther into the distance.
If you leave this main road, which is already very quiet, and take a small winding road that goes up the bumpy little hill and ultimately to the faraway beach, you will find by the roadside the house in which I lodged. It is a two-story house with a porch, and at the front of it tall weeds and miscellaneous trees form a dense thicket as if to deny any wind its passage, while the whole rear is enclosed with a thick oak woods. At the edge of the porch two old cherry trees are hanging over the roof, while on the grass a short distance away are two similarly tall apple trees with low-hanging branches.
The landlord is a small, redheaded man about fifty years of age and has been employed by the island’s railroad company for about twenty years; he commutes to the main office by train every morning. For an American, he was a rather reticent, quiet man, but once, through an agent, I finalized my agreement to rent and moved in from the city for the first time, he treated me like a relative he had not seen for ten years; together with his plain wife with bad teeth, he showed me around the house, then from the vegetable garden in the backyard to the chicken coop, even introduced me to their dog named Sport, explained the geography of the entire Staten Island, and, finally, brought out a Webster’s dictionary that must have been at least twenty years old and had been sitting in the living room, instructing me to consult it in case I didn’t understand some English word.
I rented a room on the second floor, facing the oak woods at the back; in the morning I would sort out various catalogues, documents, and such that I had collected but had not gone through during those years in Chicago, Washington, St. Louis, and other places in the United States that I had visited, and in the afternoon I would read or take a nap by a cherry tree in front of the porch, enjoying the cool breeze that came from the sea over the hill while waiting for the sun to move on till the arrival of the evening, when I would
set out for a walk.
It would be about half past seven when I would finish supper with the family, and I would take a walking stick and always walk down the path amid the various trees and weeds in front of the house toward the seaside. The whole shore is a damp meadow, but unlike the seaside in New York proper it has no rocks or stones against which surging waves break; when I first saw the pleasant and gently curving outlines of the bright green, long stretch of floating grass plot, which is like a swamp or marsh where reeds grow, sticking out onto the dark blue ocean, I somehow felt it was like a nude beauty lying ever so languidly, having tired of her dreams of pleasure.
Behind this floating grass plot, numerous fishing boats of the neighboring villages and small yachts and motorboats are moored, taking advantage of the fact that the inland sea is usually calm and its currents gentle, but as they are all painted white, they look like swans floating on a pond in a park. By twilight after the sun sets, their coloring presents an indescribably beautiful contrast to the red hue of the evening glow, the blue of the darkening water, and the verdure of the entire floating grass plot.